


a way (the find one/make one remix)

by badacts



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Except Bonus Demigods, Greek Mythology - Freeform, M/M, Orpheus and Eurydice Myth, Post-Canon, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 10:40:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14999129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badacts/pseuds/badacts
Summary: Neil dies. Andrew does deals with gods so he can drag him back.





	a way (the find one/make one remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flybbfly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flybbfly/gifts).
  * Inspired by [a way](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13643103) by [flybbfly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flybbfly/pseuds/flybbfly). 



> This is the fastest and loosest of Orpheus and Eurydice aus, based on flybbfly's gorgeous greek-myth-contemporary au, where modern-era post-canon meets...character death...
> 
> To flybbfly: thank you for taking part in the aftgremix - the original fic is beautiful, and I hope I've managed to capture the essence of it while giving it a quirky post-canon makeover. And yes, the part I'm saddest about changing is Andrew's sad lyre-playing.

It’s not something any of them really talk about. There’s something a little bit freeing about being a Fox, and that’s that having a nonentity for a father is hardly a rarity.

That’s why Andrew is actually surprised when Aaron breaks into his apartment six months after, and says, “You know you can do something. Why haven’t you?”

Andrew doesn’t say anything. Aaron seems unsurprised, and unbothered. Apparently he’s grown a sense of patience in the last few years - at eighteen, at twenty, he would have already been scowling in the face of Andrew’s silence.

This version, twenty-nine and wearing a wedding band that doesn’t glimmer at all in the dark, continues to talk inexorably. “Find Apollo. He’ll do you a favour.”

Andrew takes less a sip of whiskey than a gulp. It stings his sinuses. Feels like tears, maybe. “He can’t do anything.”

Aaron makes a face. It’s the face he always makes when he’s gearing up to say something he doesn’t want to. “He can’t do much. He can take you to Hades, though.”

“If you want me dead, there are quicker and less complex ways to do it,” Andrew points out. Then he points at the knife block on the kitchen counter. “Try that.”

Aaron rolls his eyes. “Neil was mortal, but you aren’t. You can go into the Underworld. I’ve heard Hades is willing to make deals.”

“Where did you hear that?”

Aaron shrugs, and then says, “We can try the knife instead.”

“I thought blunt force trauma was your preferred method,” Andrew says, because they’re brothers and brutalism is genetic, because these last few months he’s gotten very, very good at making people leave and not come back.

“And apparently wasting away from grief is yours.” Aaron indicates the room at large with a sure swipe of his hand. Andrew doesn’t know what he means. The place is basically untouched besides the bottle of whiskey in front of the couch.

“Now you sound like Kevin,” Andrew says. _Waste_ is kind of theme of his. That said, Kevin has been notably silent when it comes to Andrew, these last few months.

The look Aaron gives him is uncomfortable. Not because it’s judgemental - Andrew isn’t bothered by that anymore, if he ever was - but because apparently age has made him more perceptive as well as patient.

“I’m not sure whether I should be grateful you didn’t care enough to chase me off too, or whether you should be.” Not that much more perceptive, then. Not caring isn’t Andrew’s particular curse. “It’s clearly not working for you, but the whiskey will still be here when you get back.”

“And if I don’t come back?” It’s mostly ambivalent, with the barest trace of challenge.

“Then I’ll rehome your cats,” Aaron replies. “And you’ll have what you want anyway. Right?”

 

* * *

 

Despite Nicky’s protests about tradition, they hadn’t slept the night before the wedding apart. That meant that Andrew got woken up at 6AM just like he did every other morning, and despite the occasion it still wasn’t an enjoyable experience.

“Andrew. Kevin and I are going for a run,” Neil told him in his low morning voice, sitting on the edge of the bed to lace up his shoes.

Andrew didn’t answer, rolled into the blankets on his side and dazed with sleep, but he thought his expression did the job for him. Neil seemed to agree, because his mouth quirked. He leaned over and pressed a kiss to Andrew’s mouth, all pressure and affection, no depth.

“Some of us still have a finals run to prep for,” he murmured. “Go back to sleep.”

Andrew did. He was woken up a half-hour later by Kevin on the phone, panicked, breaking. By then it was already too late.

Later, Andrew remembered how Nicky had said, “It’s bad luck to see the bride - uh, other groom, how heteronormative of me, like I’m straight, ugh - before the wedding.” But neither of them believed in luck, or fate, and even if they had then surely they’d already survived the worst of it in Neil’s freshman year.

Later, Nicky said, “At least it was instant. He didn’t suffer.” Somehow, Andrew didn’t cut his throat.

 

* * *

 

Finding Apollo isn’t that hard. In the old days maybe you had to go to a temple to call him, but now Andrew walks into a nightclub in Manhattan and finds him in a VIP booth.

“I’m with him,” Andrew tells the bouncer holding the velvet rope, and for the first time in his life he’s ushered straight through while not holding a tray of drinks.

Apollo points at him and says, “You! You’re the famous one, right? An athlete, or whatever.”

Andrew and Aaron look exactly like Tilda. All they got from her hook-up in a bar bathroom in LA was the predilection for twin births and a better-than-average ear for music. Maybe instead of Exy Andrew should have taken up archery, or bioterrorism.

“I’m the famous one,” Andrew agrees. “I want to go to hell.”

 

* * *

 

Neil knew more of Andrew’s history than anyone else alive, but the issue of Andrew and Aaron’s parentage never came up. Neil was incurious, or perhaps unbothered, by the fact that Andrew did, presumably, have another parent, because he never asked, and Andrew, not knowing how to explain, had never volunteered the information.

There were plenty of things they don’t know about each other, really. Andrew at twenty had suspected he might find the extent of Neil’s truths within a few years, and from there descend into boredom. He hadn’t accounted for the intricacies of change and growth in the both of them, turning Neil not into a well-known book but a stranger at the most unexpected moments.

Andrew thought he knew people. Neil wasn’t really unique in his intricacies, but it was maybe the first time Andrew had been able to look close enough to unravel them without getting burned.

They were lying in bed one night when Neil said, “I killed someone.”

There were plenty of responses available to Andrew. _Join the club_ , perhaps. Or, _just the one_? He didn’t say any of them.

“Maybe more than one, I guess. But those would have been heat of the moment, and I never knew for sure - when you’re running, you don’t stop to check for a pulse.” The twist of Neil’s mouth in the near-dark was strangely self-deprecating. “This one was...cold-blooded. My mother was hurt, knocked out, but I didn’t know if she was unconscious or dead. And I had this man unarmed, hands up, and he was just waiting for a chance to take me out if I took my attention off him for a second.

“I didn’t know if I could do it, before then - not like that, him and me. It was easier than I thought.”

“People die easily,” Andrew noted lazily. His voice was half-muffled into the pillow.

“Yeah,” Neil said. He was staring at the ceiling, hands folded over his belly in a gentle clasp, looking a little like a corpse himself. “You’re right.”

His tone was empty. Introspective. Whether he thought it should have been harder, Andrew couldn’t have said, or whether he wondered what it meant about him, that he’d found it more simple to kill a man. Andrew couldn’t have given him any answers anyway. They didn’t talk about it again.

 

* * *

 

Andrew doesn’t have to cross the Styx. Instead, he takes the hand of a drunk frat-boy who also happens to be his father and walks into another building through a door in the club that should lead to the street. It looks like a coffee shop.

“Usually your kind keep their distance from me,” Hades tells him. He doesn’t look like Andrew imagined. He’s taller, for a start. Also, he’s wearing skinny jeans with artful rips over the knees. “Well, not from me. From death.”

Andrew doesn’t have an answer for that. He’s not sure whether Hades is referring to this occasion in particular or every other one in Andrew’s short life where he’s come inadvertently close to dying.

Instead he asks, “My kind?”

“The children of Apollo,” Persephone provides from where she’s seated on a wrought-iron stool, feet curled around the legs of it. “All demigods, really.”

“They’re not like me,” Andrew replies. He doesn’t doubt that at all - again, drunk frat-boy God who haunts nightclubs and knocks up women in washrooms. He and Andrew are nothing alike.

“You’re not wrong,” Hades acknowledges. “Why are you here?”

The truth is simple. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t stick in Andrew’s throat.

“Because I love someone,” he says eventually, “and he died.”

“Everyone dies,” Persephone says. Her head tilts as she looks at him, thoughtful, or perhaps evaluating. “I would have thought you knew that.”

“Everyone dies sometime,” Andrew agrees. “I still want him back. I’m here to make a deal.”

They look at him for a long moment. It’s definitely evaluation on their faces, and Andrew has the distinct impression that he’s being found wanting.

“The only thing of value to you I already have,” Hades comments, slow. “Also, it’s never as satisfying to take something from a man who considers _anything_ a worthwhile trade.”

He steps closer, into Andrew’s space. The look is honestly human enough, but the feel of him is all wrong. It’s like standing next to someone - something - vast. Like a regular man with a dragon for a shadow. He says, “You would even take his place, wouldn’t you?”

“That’s not a fair trade,” Andrew says. “He’s only mortal.”

“That statement means nothing if you don’t believe it."

“Yes. Just like there’s no point in saying ‘even’ when you know I would do it without hesitating.”

Hades pauses, but not because he’s surprised. “I’m sure your lover wouldn’t like that.”

“He knows we never get what we want,” Andrew says. “I think I have something you might want, though.”

“What is your offering?” Persephone asks. The phrasing rings odd and Old in his ears, echoing in his blood.

Fuck bioterrorism: Andrew should have learned a musical instrument. The power of it in this space that looks like a cafe but isn’t would be something, at least.

“Entertainment,” Andrew says instead.

This is an offer to her in particular. Her eyes are ancient, black, because she is not a thing of summer but a thing of death, or indeed the queen of it. Not stoic and essentially gentle like her husband, but something else. She asks, “A game?”

“I’ve read the stories,” Andrew says, instead of _I’ll send you a pair of court-side tickets_. “Set me a test.”

She smiles. “You’re a clever one, aren’t you? Clever _and_ brave.”

Andrew doesn’t say anything to that. Apparently doing a basic internet search makes you intelligent these days.

“It won’t be easy,” Hades says. He isn’t looking at Andrew, but at his wife. He seems pleased by what he sees there.

“You’ll have to walk out. Watch for the sun rising, and then keep walking until you get home,” Persephone says. “And you musn’t look at him, not until he’s alive again. You know what happens if you see him.”

“I know,” Andrew replies. The stories are clear about that, and his imagination can fill in the rest. “Bring him here.”

“He’s already here. Didn’t you realise?” Persephone says. “He’s right behind you.”

Despite every instinct, Andrew doesn’t turn. His ears strain for any exhalation, his skin for a trace of warmth. It’s been a long six months, but Andrew doesn’t forget.

“How do I know this isn’t a trick?” he asks instead.

It occurs to him as he says it that casting aspersions on the rulers of death isn’t clever at all. However, they don’t seem offended. Persephone looks straight past him into the space behind his right shoulder.

“Trust me this once,” Neil says. “This is real.”

He sounds real. He sounds - familiar. But Andrew comes from a world where the dead don’t come back, at least not when you’ve seen the body, and Andrew buried him. He hasn’t forgotten that, either.

“It’s not you I don’t trust,” Andrew replies.

Persephone smiles again. “Clever, clever boy. Stick to the path, and don’t look back.”

 

* * *

 

It’s a test of self-control. Andrew gets that.

It’s a commonly-held belief that Andrew has none, but that doesn’t make it true. Andrew is steel-spined and hopelessly committed to a variety of idiotic causes, the most stupid of which is just staying alive. Hades was right: it still won’t be easy. That’s because, purpose of the test aside, it’s not really Andrew’s self-control that will get him through this. It’s his faith.

They don’t talk much. Although the ground under Andrew’s feet isn’t strictly real, his body feels the fatigue of crossing it one step at a time. His brain, a tricky creature anyway, struggles with the clarity of the path in front of him in comparison to the blurring in the distance where he should still be able to see clearly. It looks like there are skyscrapers out there in the haze, but he thinks if he turned towards them to look he’d end up nowhere, lost.

Also, they’re not alone. The dead look disarmingly alive, with their fresh faces and their hungry eyes. Andrew isn’t like them and they know it. They don’t get close enough to touch, but they talk to him, their voices whispery and very, very human.

_Take us with you. Andrew? Andrew? Take us Andrew? You look so sad. Take us? Andrew._

Andrew wouldn’t take them if he could - sympathy isn’t his strong point. He just doesn’t want to hear them, because they’re dead and Neil is dead and he’s alive but out here on a path three feet wide it’s too hard to know what’s fucking real.

“I’m here,” Neil says. His voice sounds just like theirs - brittle. Alive. “I’m right here.”

“Shut up,” Andrew tells him. He keeps walking, and doesn’t look back.

 _Give your back to me_ , Andrew said to Neil a long, long time ago. The irony right now does not escape him.

 

* * *

 

The haze clears. The sun rises, glancing off of glass - windows on high rises, windscreens, sunglasses on commuters.

Andrew keeps walking. He doesn’t look back.

 

* * *

 

Andrew walks until he makes it to the apartment building. He takes the stairs instead of the elevator. When he unlocks the apartment door he leaves it hanging open behind him.

Really, it’s lucky that _he_ wasn’t hit by a car on the way here. New York drivers aren’t known for being careful of inattentive pedestrians, or those unable to use their peripheral vision _just in case_.

He stops in the middle of the living room. Everything is precisely as he left it, down to the quarter-full bottle of whiskey on the coffee table.

He can’t look at any of it. Every instinct is screaming. He swears there’s movement around him, but it’s hardly the first time he hasn’t been able to distinguish Neil - real as concrete, real as death - and the boy-made-of-lies with brown hair and brown contact lenses, potential hallucination.

The thing is - Minyards never do better than rock-bottom.

The thing is - every time Andrew forgets that, the universe moves very quickly to remind him.

The thing is - Neil has never really cared about any of that.

“Andrew,” he says, like waking, like faith. “Open your eyes.”


End file.
